2026-09-10 · Louisiana · Legislation

What happened. The statute that governs Louisiana homeowners associations is not the one most Louisiana boards think it is. On January 1, 2026, the Louisiana Planned Community Act became effective for planned communities whose declarations were filed for registry on or before December 31, 2024 — which is to say, for practically every association in the state.

The Act itself is not new. It was enacted as Act 158 of the 2024 Regular Session, on the recommendation of the Louisiana State Law Institute, and it took effect on January 1, 2025 for declarations recorded on or after that date. What arrived in January 2026 was the second half of a two-stage switch written into the Act's own final section.¹

The two dates, in the Act's own words

“Section 3. (A) This Act shall become effective on January 1, 2025, except as otherwise provided by this Section, and shall apply to declarations establishing planned communities filed for registry on or after that date.
(B) For planned communities established by a declaration or similar document filed for registry on or before December 31, 2024, this Act shall become effective on January 1, 2026.”

There is a trap in how this is published. The credits line the Legislature prints at the foot of each of the fifty sections reads only “Acts 2024, No. 158, §2, eff. Jan. 1, 2025.” It does not carry the Section 3(B) carve-out. The only place the split appears in the codified law is a note on Civil Code article 783: “Acts 2024, No. 158 effective in part Jan. 1, 2025, effective in part Jan. 1, 2026.”² A reader who checks the statute rather than the Act will get the applicability date wrong.

What replaced what

The Legislature's own Résumé Digest states the scale of the change in two sentences:

“Prior law (R.S. 9:1141.1-1141.9) provided for the La. Homeowners Association Act.”
“New law (R.S. 9:1141.1-1141.50) creates the La. Planned Community Act modeled after the 2008 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.”

Nine sections became fifty. Louisiana went from one of the thinnest community-association statutes in the country to a full common-interest code covering meetings, voting, records, budgets, assessments, fines, board composition, insurance, amendment thresholds and lien enforcement.³

It does not reach condominiums

One boundary is explicit. R.S. 9:1141.3(B)(1): “This Part shall not apply to condominium property governed by the provisions of Part II of this Chapter.” Louisiana condominiums remain under the Louisiana Condominium Act, R.S. 9:1121.101 et seq., which the 2025 and 2026 sessions left untouched.⁴

1. Act No. 158, 2024 Regular Session (SB 23) — enrolled Act text, 64 pp., including Section 3 effective dates and the 2024 Revision Comments ↩
2. La. Civ. Code art. 783 — with the note recording that Act 158 is “effective in part Jan. 1, 2025, effective in part Jan. 1, 2026” ↩
3. Résumé Digest, Act 158 (SB 23), 2024 Regular Session — Louisiana Legislature ↩
4. La. R.S. 9:1141.3 — Applicability (Louisiana Planned Community Act) ↩
5. Horton v. Savannah Place Homeowners’ Ass’n, No. 56,945-CA (La. App. 2 Cir. July 15, 2026) — slip opinion ↩